


i swear to god, i wasn't born to fight.

by mihkrokosmos



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Blood and Injury, Dissociation, Hurt Neil Josten, I'm Bad At Tagging, Introspection, M/M, Protective Andrew Minyard, Sort Of, good old suffering, in his own way, mary and nathan are their own warnings, mentions of ichirou, mostly cos not even i know what i've written, neil gets beaten up and andrew patches him up, rated t for language and descriptions of injuries, the fact that there's a tag for that is just so much, they aren't actually present but neil thinks of them a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihkrokosmos/pseuds/mihkrokosmos
Summary: (Maybe just a little bit, enough to make me sick of it).“Is this going to become a regular thing?” Andrew’s lazy drawl contains a multitude of questions and Neil has none of the answers.He’d shrug again, but he remembers the way it hurt last time.“I’ll find out next time.”“There won’t be a next time.”Andrew’s so certain. Steadfast. There won’t be a next time. The only person with any say in the matter is in Japan, an ocean away, pulling strings he should have no claim to. There won’t be a next time, except there might be. Except there’s always a chance. Except they are not the ones who decide this sort of thing.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 4
Kudos: 129





	i swear to god, i wasn't born to fight.

**Author's Note:**

> title from bambi by hippo campus which is a neil josten song and u cannot tell me otherwise. honestly i wrote this because i needed to take my mind of things and we can't have nice things ever

The sky is red, melting wax dripping down the horizon. It’s sunset— no, it’s sunrise— no, it just is. Time is the blood on his hands, on his clothes, dripping down from the gash ripped across his cheek. Everything about him is red, endlessly so. He doesn’t pretend to understand it, doesn’t pretend to know why he was grown from crimson and scarlet and why he will die the same way. He runs his tongue along his teeth, tastes copper and spits it out across the white tiles.

No carpets. Too hard to clean.

Someone hauls him up from the freezing ground, using the collar of his red t-shirt as leverage. Skin-to-skin contract would demand too much from a strained thread, on the verge of snapping. His shirt is red. His father always preferred wearing blue. There is nothing more to it, not really. His father was a bastard in shades of aquamarine and Neil Josten has the elegance of a burning car and shredded skin and he’s so much red, he thinks he’s losing his mind. There is so much of him, barely held together by the fabric of his clothes, and yet there is nothing he can give away.

He thinks he directs someone to the first aid kit. Head wounds always look more serious than they are. His head is not injured. He doesn’t  _ think _ it is, anyway. Then again, the catalogue he has made of all his aches and jagged parts could fill a stockroom and still have loose pages slipping under the door. The hand on his shirt shakes him. It isn’t gentle, but Neil latches onto the familiarity of violence— well. Not violence, not the type he was cut from. What’s the opposite of gentle? Brutal, he supposes. Unkind. The hand gripping onto his collar loosens, dropping so that it clutches at the hem. 

Strong, Neil decides. Strong is the opposite of gentle.

Somehow, he has been moved from the kitchen tiles to the bathroom ones. It’s not a huge change, the flooring of both is the exact same. He’s hauled into the bathtub, leaving harsh brushstrokes of scarlet in his wake. His mother used to scream at him when he bled out. He remembers that— remembers the way she’d claw at his skin and point out the way his dna gathered beneath her nails. He hadn’t screamed at her when she bled out across a nondescript leather car seat. He wonders if he should have.

Neil was ten when he watched his father tear a man to pieces, each cut calculated down to the last centimetre. He was younger, still, when Lola Malcolm pressed a knife into his palms, her smile sharper than the blade. Some days, he barely remembers where he was. Other days, he can picture a blue sky and blue eyes and a blue shirt. Everything stained red. Neil’s father was always so, so fucking fond of the colour blue. Red showed up quite well against it.

He thinks he might be sick. He says as much, and the reply he gets is laced with enough detached disgust to change his mind. 

The thing is, he doesn’t know if he feels sick or angry or frustrated or if he’s even feeling because someone once said that circuits overloaded and broke under too much pressure— he’s not a circuit, he’s a person, he’s real but that seems like such a trivial thing to acknowledge when his blood is webbing across the acrylic of the bathtub. It’s messy and smeared across the whiteness and Neil reaches out to touch it. The hand stops him. Still no direct touch, but Neil can feel the heat and the shaking (he doesn’t know which one of them is trembling, but he guesses it’s both) through the thin armbands he still wears.

“What time is it?” He croaks. He doesn’t sound like himself. The words claw their way up his throats, his mother’s sharp nails digging through everything he wants to say and choosing the most practical question from the mess.

“You have a phone,” Andrew snaps. There is no warmth to it, but it’s the furthest thing from his past that Neil has heard today.

“It’s broken,” Neil shrugs. Tries to shrug. His shoulder burns.

“You’re a fucking disaster,” Andrew informs him, like he doesn’t already know that, like they haven’t had several variants of this conversation already. Andrew presses a cloth drenched in alcohol to some miscellaneous injury on Neil’s side and Neil hisses despite himself. “What, you thought it wouldn’t hurt? Newsflash, Tin Man, injuries don’t work like that.”

Neil hums, still feeling vaguely like he’s underwater. He wonders when he’ll snap out of it, if he ever will. He’s had worse, objectively, but the bar was on the fucking floor back then. He’s become almost comfortable, living in an apartment with Andrew. It’s a little like slicing open a scar, reopening a healed wound and wondering why it hurt so much more the second time. Absentmindedly, he spits out another mouthful of blood, poking a finger into his mouth and prodding at his teeth to try and find the offending injury. Andrew sighs, long suffering as ever, and bats his hand away.

“Stop. Mouth injuries can heal on their own.”

“Hm,” Neil offers, and then, “‘s annoying.”

“So are you. Shut up.”

Neil has checked out of his own head, watching Andrew patch him up through someone’s else's eyes. Blue eyes. His eyes, he thinks, and he doesn’t stop to wonder who ‘his’ is referring to. At some point, he’ll have to dig up the sordid details of what had happened, go through everything with a fine tooth comb and try not to gag as he tugs at memories he never wanted. Everyone tells him to work at his own pace with things like this— everyone tells him there’s a reason why his brain doesn’t want to hit replay. They’re probably right, but Neil has never been friends with his own brain and that is not likely to change.

“Turn around.”

Neil pauses— considers— he worries his bottom lip between his teeth, nerves pulled taut underneath mottled skin and exhausted muscles.

“Keep talking to me?” He asks, shifting slowly. He’s facing the wall, right now. He knows he’s safe, if his back is to Andrew, but— it’s that— his brain— Neil has never been friends with it. Barely even on speaking terms. From the corner of his eye, Neil watches as Andrew picks him apart with his hands to analyse the inner workings, disjointed cogs and glitching circuitry, before coming to a decision.

Andrew isn’t really a talkative person. He doesn’t explain himself, most of the time, and actions speak louder than his vocal chords can handle. Sometimes, he decides to push himself. Sometimes, his mouth barely moves. Their relationship was built on a series of tradeoffs, a way to see how much one person could bend without the other breaking. Then again, it’s not that at all. They don’t demand anything from each other, don’t push for the demolition of walls. It just— happens. There’s so much more than them to just that, even so, but Neil’s head is filled with cotton and his eyelids itch and there’s a new ache in his jaw.

He does register Andrew’s low rasp, though, between the pinpricks across his skin and the roughness of the cloth. He’s not sure what he’s talking about. Doesn’t even know the language. Neil can’t really focus, which is a shame, because he’s always liked the way Andrew curls some of his letters, the way harsh consonants turn into slamming car doors. There’s nothing gentle about the way Andrew talks, no, just an unerring strength behind every word. Neil doesn’t doubt that voicing it aloud would earn him an unmarked grave in some construction site. The thought nearly makes him smile.

“Is this going to become a regular thing?” Andrew’s lazy drawl contains a multitude of questions and Neil has none of the answers. 

He’d shrug again, but he remembers the way it hurt last time.

“I’ll find out next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

Andrew’s so certain. Steadfast.  _ There won’t be a next time _ . The only person with any say in the matter is in Japan, an ocean away, pulling strings he should have no claim to. There won’t be a next time, except there might be. Except there’s always a chance. Except they are not the ones who decide this sort of thing.

“Not enjoying playing nurse?”

“Shut the fuck up. Go to sleep.”

Neil pulls a face, tugging at healing cuts and scrapes. The bathtub is cold, and he’s half slumped across the edge. Falling asleep, realistically, won’t take long. They’ll deal with the fallout later, whatever that means for them. Nothing comes easy, does it? Neil’s growing complacence is worrying, in the sense that he didn’t think he’d ever feel more than an overwhelming urge to outrun the shadows catching at his heels. Andrew brought a sense of security —  _ he’s strong _ , he reminds himself — and Neil didn’t realise how— reliant he’d come to be.

“Will you stay, yes or no?” Neil asks, but he’s exhausted and the words slur together, practically indistinguishable. 

A pause.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhhh my twt is M1NYARDS and my tumblr is citylihgts if u wanna say hi :] stay hydrated wash ur hands acab and blm


End file.
